Flambadou. Flom-be-doo. Beyond being fun to say – and entertaining to watch – it’s a key component in many of Luke Nguyen’s dishes at Lua, the celebrity chef’s 290-seat restaurant at the Sydney Fish Market. The cast-iron, cone-shaped apparatus is heated in a charcoal-fired hearth until it’s scorching hot. Then it’s filled with Wagyu beef tallow, which is poured over lobsters, clams and more.

Lua means “fire” in Vietnamese, and the aforementioned hearth is the centrepiece of the restaurant. The smoke and exposed grill remind Nguyen of Vietnamese street food, and the Fish Market location reminds him of his parents, who would buy fresh produce from their local wet markets in Vietnam twice a day.

But perhaps ironically for a restaurant anchored by fire, one of its most popular dishes is served cold. The pho beef tartare sees marbled Wagyu is seasoned with the flavours of pho (cinnamon, star anise, cloves, black cardamom) before arriving alongside a pho gel and puffed rice paper crackers.